Rifa'a al-Tahtawi founds Cairo's School of Languages…
1835 CE
The School of Languages will graduate the earliest modern Egyptian intellectual milieu, which will form the basis of the emerging grassroots mobilization against British colonialism in Egypt.
Born in 1801 in the village of Tahta, Sohag, the same year the French troops evacuated Egypt, Tahtawi is an Azharite who had been recommended by his teacher and mentor Hassan El-Attar to be the chaplain of a group of students Muhammed Ali was sending to Paris in 1826.
Originally intended to be an Imam, or Islamic "religious guide", he was allowed to associate with the other members of the mission through persuasion of his authoritative figures.
Many student missions from Egypt have gone to Europe in the early nineteenth century to study arts and sciences at European universities and acquire technical skills such as printing, shipbuilding and modern military techniques.
According to his memoir Rihla (Journey to Paris), Tahtawi studied ethics, social and political philosophy, and mathematics and geometry.
He read works by Condillac, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Bézout among others during his séjour in France.
In 1831, Tahtawi had returned home to be part of the statewide effort to modernize the Egyptian infrastructure and education, undertaking a career in writing and translation.
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